


dream me

by grimnismal



Series: wild geese [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Ableism, Adopted Children, Alternate Universe, Autism Spectrum, Child Abandonment, Disability Written By Disabled Writer, Disabled Character, F/F, Foster Care, Gen, Harm to Children, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Institutional Ableism, Kid Fic, M/M, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29733255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimnismal/pseuds/grimnismal
Summary: He wonders what the classrooms of the normal kids look like, wonders if there are posters up, if there are desks and toys for them to play with. There are two desks in this room, for him and Emily. There’s no posters up to look at. There’s a teddy bear in the corner that is there specifically for Emily to grasp when she has an episode. He knows Emily has a good family because they always drop her off and give her a kiss on each cheek despite her squirming away from touch. Every morning he touches his own lips and then to his cheeks and whispers to himself to pretend he has parents, too, who care for him.Sebastien is just one of many kids stuck in the foster system in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. He dreamed of meeting his parents like every other child that was abandoned as an infant. Nothing changed all that much in his foster placement, just the different ways to be made afraid. Little did he know, the new neighbours that had moved in next door weremuchmore than they seemed.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: wild geese [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2185305
Comments: 3
Kudos: 66
Collections: The Old Guard Big Bang





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> My artist was [shatterthefragments!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatterthefragments) Thank you so much for the amazing art, it was a pleasure to work with you!
> 
> [Link to Shatter's work on tumblr!](https://theoldguardinshatters.tumblr.com/post/644540433751506944/art-for-dream-me)  
> This was a seriously mammoth task for me, my longest fic to date ever as well as part of a big bang! Very exciting. 
> 
> I must say that I wrote the experiences of Sebastien based around some of my own experiences at school, as well as the thinking and perception on my own as an autistic child, with co-morbidities that aren't touched on but referenced in this fic (I'm planning on writing a sequel.)
> 
> This work is unbeta'd.

_The roots of resilience . . . are to be found in the sense of being understood by_  
_and existing in the mind and heart of a loving, attuned, and self-possessed other._  
**\-- Diana Fosha**

There is not much Sebastien le Livre knows about the world. He knows that he is seven years old, that he is enrolled in Little Lake Elementary School and that he has no family whatsoever. He knows he doesn’t get to go to normal class with the other kids and that he’s not going to go very far in life, according to his teachers. He is having a good week, though, because he has managed to grasp and write in all the pages of the workbook he has. Even Emily, the girl who is also with him in the not normal classroom, is happy for him because he tells her and her hands flap. 

He thinks the teachers are _stupid_ because if they just made an effort to work out what Emily was trying to say, she wouldn’t be here with him. They both aren’t allowed out of the small courtyard area that’s surrounded by metal fencing similar to that around the school. Sometimes he sits and reads to her while lines her toys up out in the sun. Some days he stares, with his face pressed to the bars, at the children who run and play in the schoolyard that he’s not allowed to have anything to do with. Sometimes it hurts but he still remembers what they told him the first time he asked why he couldn’t be with the other children, be it playing or learning. 

_You’ll bring the whole class down and you don’t want to stop the other children learning, do you? Now, let’s get back to our work book. Maybe if you get this done you can read a little before the end of day bell rings, hmm?_

He wonders what the classrooms of the _normal_ kids look like, wonders if there are posters up, if there are desks and toys for them to play with. There are two desks in this room, for him and Emily. There’s no posters up to look at. There’s a teddy bear in the corner that is there specifically for Emily to grasp when she has an episode. He knows Emily has a good family because they always drop her off and give her a kiss on each cheek despite her squirming away from touch. Every morning he touches his own lips and then to his cheeks and whispers to himself to pretend he has parents, too, who care for him. 

_Have a good morning, Sebastien!_ Hand to one cheek. 

_We’ll see you this afternoon, Sebastien!_ Hand to the other cheek. 

It never works though, because he can’t _imagine_ them, can’t build off another experience of it. He’s never had anyone who truly wished to see him again, except maybe when he was a baby and in his first foster homes. But he was so tiny then that he can’t remember them. Now he’s been with mister and missus O’Grady, who make him call them ‘Sir’ and ‘Ma’am’ and make him remake his bed every morning very, very tight. Makes him say the Lord’s Prayer and seven Hail Marys every morning before being allowed to pee or eat. 

He doesn’t think they love him, they never say, and there’s three older boys in the house who never say it either. They all have sullen and hunted looks on their faces, like the one that he feels come over his own face when Miss McCarthy catches him real close to the fence at recess or lunch time instead of sitting and eating his cold fries and peas. He doesn’t own any toys except for an extremely battered soldier doll. He doesn’t really play with it anymore, keeps it close as the only thing that’s _his_ , that came from a placement older than his own memory. 

The bell has gone off for home time during his pondering and he struggles to get his bag together with clumsy hands and tenuous patience. He doesn’t want to go _home_ , because at least people here know he exists and talk to him, even if it’s to scold him for something he didn’t mean to do. 

\---

His routine of sitting on the bus front seat, upright and stiff, with his bag in his lap is initiated. He feels normal kids pulling his hair and throwing things at him. Sees the bus driver look at him with something on their face that he can’t decipher. He gets off at Milford Street, with no other children, and begins his walk count. Seventy footsteps to his house and about seven minutes total. That is, if there are no cars or other people on the street. Then he has to stop and wait on the left side for them to pass or drive off. There is nothing new about this walk, except that there is. 

Moving trucks and new cars are around the house next door that had been for sale for a long time. He doesn’t get his hopes up about maybe a new friend, because normal kids don’t play with him, or about maybe it’s his real parents because they didn’t want him. Didn’t want him enough to drop him off at a hospital, only outside a convent that gave him his last name. _The Sisters of the Holy Book_. Many of them were French and decided to give him a last name. Sebastien of the Book. It’s funny sounding but it’s the only thing he has, as well as his doll. He shakes his head out of his reverie, takes one last look at the house and finds a brown skinned man staring at him, smiling. He does not smile back (he doesn’t know how to yet, he hasn’t stood in front of the mirror long enough to master the use of his muscles) and continues his verbal but quiet counting of his steps to his house next door. He pivots to turn and walk up the front path and takes his key out of his shirt and unlocks the door. 

\---

Yusuf had always wanted a family, a house and someone to share it with. Even after he realised he was gay, and that it would be significantly more difficult considering the nature of the world, he still wanted this for himself and whoever he would end up with. That he had ended up with Nicolo was a blessing from _Allah_ and that they had been graced with the opportunity to become parents to Nile after the devastating accident that claimed her entire family but not her was another blessing, but one that grew out of a metaphorical bomb crater. 

The town they’ve bought a house with four bedrooms and a large backyard in for cheaper than an apartment in the closest city is the one their closest friend and sister equivalent Andy grew up in. He and Nicky had decided to move to be closer to her, as she was struck by an uncharacteristic need to move, move, move home and settle with Quynh, her partner of many years. There was, however, a melancholy that moved over her as she stayed though, and she spent quite a lot of time within the library of the town and neither they, nor Quynh knew why. 

Yusuf placed the last box from the moving van down in the empty living room and beams up at the high ceilings and airy demeanour of the house. The house is perfect and even had children next door for Nile to play with. Yusuf is intrigued by the boy from the neighbours that had stopped and stared at him for a good few minutes prior to moving on with his march up to the door of his home just next door. His little eyes seemed to bore into his soul from under his mop of dirty blonde hair. It was like being looked at by Nicky or Andy, looking at you so intently until you were so uncomfortable you gave them what they wanted. 

“Baba! Can we set up my trampoline next? Can we? Please?!” The joyful little voice of his daughter calls to him, becoming louder and more easily heard as she basically flies down the stairs to throw herself into his arms, her arms around his neck and her curly, natural hair mixing with his. 

“Don’t do it, _tesoro_ , she’s been nagging me all afternoon, haven’t you little devil,” Nicky says as steps off the last stair into the living room, tickling Nile’s belly. Peals of laughter ring out, blessing the house in cheer. 

“But _papa…_ ” Nile begins to whine but is cut off.

“Not tonight, okay _passerota_?” Nicky’s quiet voice soothing but tired as he caresses his daughter’s face. “We promise to get it up but not until we get the rest of the house done, okay? We promise to have it done for you on the weekend, and maybe you can invite the boy from next door over to try it out?”

Nile subtly pushes to be set down and he does, and after she stands there worrying her cheek with her teeth, deep in thought. Then she smiles and nods, always a cheerful and easy going child. 

“Okay, papa! That sounds good!” She chirps and wriggles out of Yusuf’s arms, already moving to help sort the last of the books ahead of them. 

“So you also saw the boy, Nicky? Very odd boy. Didn’t even look at me before walking stiffly up to the house next door and going inside! I do hope there’s nothing wrong, he looks like a sweet kid,” Yusuf mumbles as he continues to unpack belongings away into their rightful places. 

They did not have as much stuff as they wanted but it meant they could build on what they had. Maybe they can use that same mentality to help Andy with whatever is happening to her, show her that everything was alright. That she can let go of whatever she was dealing with and talk to someone, even if it’s neither them or Quynh. 

He wants to grow forward. 

\---

It’s been a few days since the new neighbours had moved in and Sebastien was playing in the yard. It didn’t have much, a swing set (he liked that) and sand pit up close to the fence that borders the new neighbours yard. He wants to peek over and watch the girl jumping on her trampoline but that would be rude. 

Still. It _would_ be fun to jump on it with her… he could pretend that she was his friend and that he would see her at school the next day. He peers at the back door of the O’Grady’s house and seeing that no one is there, he quickly crosses the backyard to huddle down and stare through the white slats with an eye closed. The girl is bouncing happily, cheerful squeals and speech impacted by the force of her jumps. There’s a man sitting on the porch, in a nice chair watching her bounce. 

He stares at the man with his straight brown hair and glasses as he alternates between reading the book in his hands and watching the dark skinned girl bounce. He wishes he had a family like hers. He can feel something swell inside himself and get close to bursting.

“Hello,” a voice comes from above him, causing him to jump like a cat and shuffle away from the fence. It’s the man with the glasses, having snuck up on him apparently while he was thinking. He feels himself tense and goes on guard, still standing on frozen legs. 

The man smiles at him disarmingly, book in hand and his daughter scurrying off the trampoline to move over to see what all the fuss is about. She gives him a wave and a gap toothed smile. Sebastien thinks this is all very dangerous but doesn’t say anything, waiting in anticipation of making a break for it, just out of the reach of the man’s length of arm. 

“My name’s Nicolo, but you can call me Nicky, and this here is my daughter Nile,” the girl waves again at her name being spoken, “we just moved here and we were wondering if you wanted to come over and use the trampoline. Are your parents home?”

Sebastien stares a little, because what can he say to that? He doesn’t have parents and the foster carers he lives with have never let _anyone_ not over twelve to a playdate, let alone _him_. He blinks and turns just as the squeaking of the back door hits the air and Mrs O’Grady comes scurrying out, red in the face. 

“Sebastien! What have you done? Have you been annoying the neighbours?” She tuts as she reefs the boy back and puts herself in his place, brushing herself down. “Helen O’Grady, and you must be the new neighbours!”

She’s turned her face on and is smiling brightly. Sebastien is envious of her. It hurts his face to smile even a little bit. 

The man, Nicky, looks at her like he wants to figure out what she’s up to, like he wants to figure out what’s wrong with her.

Unbidden, he thinks _please do, please do_ but he says nothing and stays still behind Mrs O’Grady.

“Yes! We just moved in a couple of days ago and we noticed the boy was around the same age as our daughter and wondered if it would be okay for him to come over and play for a bit?”

The man sounded so hopeful to get him to come over he almost feels very sad when Mrs O’Grady says, no, sorry, her foster children are not allowed to go to places without written permission through their case manager and she hopes they have a good afternoon. She grabs him by the shirt and part drags him up the stairs to the back door and then inside.

“You _know_ the rule about talking to the neighbours, you insolent little mutt! You can’t think properly, you can’t do _anything_ properly, barely worth the money they pay me to feed and clothe you! No wonder nobody wanted you, they knew you’d turn out like this!”

With every barbed insult his shoulders clenched and rolled, trying to protect himself physically from the vicious words being spoken to him. She keeps saying mean things to him and it keeps hurting even when he’s heard them all before. 

He makes himself disappear. 

\--

Nicky can hear muffled yelling from the house next door and he desperately hopes the boy is okay. It could just be an extremely loud television but it sounds like the dreadful woman that had taken the boy inside after lying to him. 

Nicky chops his carrots harder the longer it happens until he’s loudly slamming his knife through other vegetables as well and his husband and daughter are staring at him strangely. He puts his knife down before he hurts himself (always remember knife safety! His brain tells him unhelpfully) and goes to sit at the table while Nile does some make up homework and Joe does a rough sketch of the area, with its high ceilings and homely kitchen.

“I think she’s lying and she’s doing something to that boy,” he starts abruptly and Joe looks up sharply. 

“Nile, honey, go do some work out on the coffee table for a little bit, okay? I need to talk to your dad,” and Nile, the beautiful intelligent girl that she is, gets up and moves without a single sound of dissent.

“Joe, there’s something wrong in that house. I can feel it, not to mention the way she _manhandled_ that little boy who’d done everything she asked to go back inside!” 

He wanted to _know_ and he wanted to get that kid and the other three kids in the house with him out of there. 

He just. Hates standing by and doing nothing. 

Joe’s hand reaches over and grasps his, a small smile curling his lips and his moustache. Oops, he must have said that out loud. 

“We can contact Quynh and get her or one of her colleagues around to do a surprise visit, okay? Remember there’s only one elementary school here so you’ll inevitably run into him dropping Nile off at school on monday, alright? You’re not doing nothing, you’re being _smart_ rather than putting any kids in danger by jumping into a situation you don’t know the topography of,” Joe brings Nicky’s hand to his lips before returning it to the table. 

“I love you so much, you know that right? To the moon and stars and that little planet that Nile showed me that can have people living on it, maybe, yeah?” The words flow out of Nicky like a sudden flood, strong emotion making his accent much thicker and much harder to parse. 

Joe looks at him and smiles deeper, the laugh lines around his eyes crinkling as he does so. 

“I love you too, space man, now come back to earth and chop those vegetables without adding your fingers to the mix!”

\--

It’s the first day of Nile’s new school and Nicky and Joe made the decision that they wanted to be there to take her to her classroom. They’d been by the front office for directions and to make sure everything was settled for her to be there but there was still some paperwork they needed to go over and fill out but it could be done after Nile was dropped off at her classroom. They trundled on down the halls, towards the third grade classrooms, the walls covered in bright pictures and posters. The town was small but somehow had more than enough small children to fit into multiple large two story buildings on the school campus. Nile was swinging their hands back and forth as she skipped her way down the hall. 

It wasn’t long before they found the right classroom, introduced themselves to Nile’s teacher and his aide and knelt down to give Nile a hug and kiss. They would be picking her up after school today, they reminded her, and they were going to get an ice cream before coming home to work on homework. The toothy grins makes a reappearance on her cherubic face. They send her into the classroom for hopefully a good day of learning and the teacher gives them a wave, friendly smile sending them off. 

They’re about to cross the big field area of the school, on the lone and occasionally grass covered path towards the school office when Nicky looks up towards the oddly fenced building and yard. He’s close enough to see it’s Sebastien staring at them through the bars in the fence. 

Sebastien gives a tiny wave and they move to cross to the fence and ask _why are you in this locked area?_ and _are you okay?_ but he sees them make the move towards him and he shakes his head rapidly. Then he’s gone, into the building that’s dark and extremely uninviting. Like a cage. The fire that was stoked in him only days ago with the horrid woman next door is roaring to life again, finally exposed to the air. Joe takes his hand and purposely drags him away as he knows if he’s given a chance he’ll scale the fence and take the boy right on with him and where would his husband and child be then? 

“We’ll call Quynh when we get home, Nicolo, but we have to _get home_ to do that, first,” Joe tuts and grips his hand tightly as they make their way back onto the path towards the school offices. “No getting into trouble with the police because we kidnapped a boy! Even if Nile has said she’s wanted a sibling a couple of times…” 

Joe’s voice trails off as he goes into his own head but it isn’t too long before they’re back at the office and signing the paperwork. 

Nicky gets the courage to ask what the enclosed classroom and courtyard area is for. The administration assistant blinks a couple of times before answering, cheerfully. 

“Oh, that’s our special education unit! We currently only have a couple of students in our special ed program right now but we assure you they get everything they need in the unit, the same as every other child in this school!”

She smiles. Nicky stares and feels disgust rising in him, as well as pressure in his head. They really believe locking children away because they have difficulties or diagnoses that are harder to work with is good. Just when he thought he was finished being angered and surprised by the American education system it continues to kick him in the balls. 

He schools his face into his patented emotionless face. Joe finishes signing off on the part of the paperwork that he was needed for. Joe wishes them all a good day and they’re out of the office and the pressure that was building in Nicky’s head. He hasn’t missed the times that this would happen, especially back in Italy. The anger and rage would build and build until suddenly it wasn’t him anymore and he would ‘come to’ in a sense to the devastation that whoever was in control of his body at that point rought. But. He wasn’t that boy, or that man, anymore having reached out for help when he’d managed to get into the US, working through his anger issues in a way that allowed him to take control of himself, as well as medication for the anxiety he has. 

They make it to the car and Joe opts to drive them back home, taking one of the longer routes back through the suburbs to give them some time to talk before they get back to the house and the prospect of _actually doing something_ instead of sitting idly by. 

“We need to talk about what we want to say to Quynh when we ring, because we can’t just sound like we have a grudge against the woman and her husband,” Joe speaks slowly as he pulls up and off the road at one of the local parks, currently dead and empty due to the fact that it was both a work day and children were at school. 

He turns the car off and unlatches the seatbelt so he can turn some to look at his husband. Nicky chews on what he’s said for maybe a minute, watching as the sunshine turns into a slow drizzle of rain, grey clouds and a dampness seem to invade everything when it gets like this. 

“I think we should give her what we witnessed on the weekend, as well as what we’ve seen about the,” Nicky purses his mouth distastefully, “special education unit in that school. It cannot be healthy to have kids locked up like that, do they even get to go out with the other children?” 

“And that we would be interested in fostering to adopt Sebastien without even having met him properly?”

“Yes, exactly that.”


	2. Part Two

The call with Quynh went as well as could be expected of a potential legal issue and investigation. She let them know that their tip could be made anonymously but may well be brought up in a court of law if the matter escalates to that extent. 

_ “I have to say, from an outside perspective this incidentally does not look good for you guys. You  _ **_just_ ** _ move in next door and talk to the neighbours once before reporting them to social services and asking to take one of the current cases at the same time? It’s suspicious,” Quynh sighs over the phone, playing with what must be her lunch.  _

_ “Surely they can’t ignore our reports just because of that? We’re not trying to ruin anyone’s life, we’re trying to protect children!” Joe clenches his fists on the dining table as they shake. It makes him feel sick that people would think that he’s purposely trying to ruin someone’s life, especially when he doesn’t even know them!  _

_ “I know that, but others don’t, Joe. People see what they want to see, especially those in the public and within the department itself. However, due to the fact that you fostered and adopted Nile, you have a leg to stand on. I can’t give you much more than that as I don’t have placements in Little Lake and next to no contact to the department there but I can get a friend, James Copley, to have a look around, especially at the school. If there’s any news I’ll pass it along for you, I promise.” _

_ “Alright, thank you, Quynh, give our love to Andy!” Nicky leans over to get closer to the phone to say this. Quynh hums an affirmative before hanging up and Nicky quickly hangs up as well, sliding the phone closer to himself so he can slip it into his pocket. _

They haven’t seen Sebastien since that day but Quynh had called them to let them know that yes, there was something wrong with the school, and they were going to look further into things. What was unspoken was this:  _ be ready because you might get your wish _ . And as such, they went about their lives as they would, taking Nile to school and walking her to her classroom, each kissing her cheek before she trots in. Joe has decided to start getting back into some work, citing that as much as he  _ loves _ spending day after day with nothing to do, he’s starting to get bored. But all this with the potential that the bedroom nearest the stairs upstairs may be occupied soon, with its bed made with plain but tasteful linen and a nondescript desk. 

Nicky is in the middle of chopping up some fruit for Nile’s afternoon snack while she works on her math homework when his phone vibrates. A message from Andy, the first he’s gotten in the last few months. He reads and rereads the message, glad that he’s had Joe turn his read messages off so that he can do this. 

_ Hey, Nico, do you want to meet up for a coffee? Q wants me to give you some stuff and it’s easier to meet half-way in Cedar Creek than Little Lake because of work,  _ Andy’s message reads, in her telltale perfunctory sentences that would pass an editor's muster. 

_ sure,  _ he replies,  _ where at and when? _

He goes back to his chopping and it takes about fifteen minutes for Andy to reply, a succinct  _ Cafe on 38th street in Cedar Creek right now? _

Nicky sighs, of course it had to be right this minute, but always left to the last one with her. 

Joe’s in the office adjoining the kitchen, so he gets Nile to pack her stuff up and move in there with him while he’s out. 

“Andy wants to meet up with me right now, apparently, is Nile all good to sit in with you while I’m out meeting up with her?”

“Of course, hon, tell her ‘hello’ from us and that we hope she comes over some time, we miss her,” Joe tells him and Nicky nods, pecks him on the cheek and does the same with Nile and is gone. 

\--

The trip to the cafe in Cedar Creek is short and a little bit tense for Nicky. He’s wondering why Andy only wants to talk to _ him _ and not Joe as well, especially with information regarding Sebastien. He’s starting to run himself into a feedback loop of anxiety when he pulls up a hundred or so metres from the cafe, and just sits for a few minutes to do the breathing exercises his therapist had given him. 

  1. One-two-three-four. Hold. _OUT._ One-two-three-four. Repeat.



He gets himself back under a reasonable amount of control before getting out of the car, locking it and moving up the street to the cafe. It’s warm, cozy and completely different to the cafes of Italy, which are open and vibrant. Granted, it would be hard to get that same feeling when there’s lots of cloud cover and snow nearly the moment one comes out of summer. 

He spots Andy in a corner, where she’s able to see everyone coming and going. She has her sunglasses off and sitting on a pile of newspaper clippings while she rubs at her eyes, massive dark circles under them. He’s concerned for her, they all are, with the odd behaviour and the sudden decision to quit her job. 

“Hey, Nico,” she says quietly, but with a quality that had lured him in, made him fall partially in love with her in college while still nursing the crush and adoration for Joe from a distance. The same voice that had him falling into bed with her, too, in the same way. Anything to distract from his growing feelings for Joe, which wasn’t fair to her. He thinks, maybe, he had damaged her with that, had seen the way her face had fallen the last time he had come to her apartment in the town they’d been in for college, the way there was an excitement that had leached out of her and a dimness had come over her eyes. 

She’d been polite and had smiled at him as he left. Then he didn’t see her again for an entire year until she came back and there was a hardness to her, something that hadn’t been there before. He didn’t think to ask (no, he was too scared to ask,  _ did I do this to you, too? _ because he was smart, he was loving, but he was still a coward) and they never talked about it again. Andy slotted herself back into a role as a best friend, albeit a bit distant. Drank more than he had ever seen her drink, but he had lost the right to judge and pass judgement. 

They don’t talk about college, except for around Joe’s friends that he shares with Nicky. They don’t know Andy.

He sits across the table from her. She’s in a signature dark ensemble of  _ shirt, jeans and jacket _ . Nothing has changed since college. 

“Hello, Andy,” he says quietly. There’s something different, something electric charged emanating from Andy, like she’s barely holding it in but the idea of letting it go hurts more. 

He watches her and she takes a sip of her coffee. 

“Before I tell you what I wanted you here for, I want you to know that this isn’t your fault and nothing you could have done would have stopped it from happening.”

He leans back.  _ His _ fault? What did he do? What was this all about?

Andy sees the questions on his face and sighs, looks heavenward and continues. 

“You know that last time we slept together, back in 2011? Yeah? Well it wasn’t exactly a safe fuck, Nico.”

Nicky flushes, shame and the vulgarity of her words sparking red across his pale face and arms. 

“What are you talking about, Andy? Are you saying you had an abortion?” His accent has started to show itself more, started to mangle his consonants and vowels, making him sound like that twenty five year old who had just gotten off the plane from Italy with nothing but a college acceptance letter and an english language easy translation book in his backpack.

She looks at him, dead in the eye, and speaks slowly like he was stupid. 

“No, Nico, I’m telling you that you have a child, a son, out there in the world.”

He stares at her, mouth open and hanging. He blinks and his mind is like radio static, nothing transmitted in and nothing transmitted out. 

She passes him the newspaper clippings and he clutches them, looking at her.

“Where is he? I want to meet him! What the fuck, Andy, how could you--”

“You can’t see him and I can’t see him because I can’t find him. I gave him up, you know, because what kid would deserve me as a mother? I wanted him to have something better, and to not grow up thinking he had ruined his parents’ lives just by being born,” her lips turn down, the dark under her eyes more pronounced. She’s started tearing up her napkin into short strips, and then tearing those too. 

She’s no longer looking at him, head bowed. 

“I didn’t want him to grow up like I had, with a pit in place of his heart, feeling like he could never get enough. I just wanted more for him and I’m sorry I took the chance to be his father away from you, Nicolo. But. It wasn’t safe for me  _ or _ him when he was born as that year I had fallen into some pretty heavy shit which I should have known better than to do. But.”

Nicky doesn’t think he’s taken a breath since she had dropped this bomb on him. He’s hanging onto her words but also thinking  _ where is he? Where is my son? What have you done with my son? _

“I left him at the convent, where the sisters that had raised me still lived. Bundled him up in a carrier and left him there, hoping that would be enough to keep him safe and maybe I could pick him up later when everything was normal again but it wasn’t. It wasn’t enough, nothing I’ve ever done has been enough.”

There are tears running down her face and his hands are shaking. He looks at the clippings and print outs she’s given him. He recognises the local paper as most of the clips and there is a print out of court document apparently. 

He stands abruptly, not completely of his own volition. Pushes his chair in and grasps his papers. 

“I’m enraged, and I’m furious that you did this to me, that you made this decision for  _ all _ of us. That you took away my choice to make about whether or not I wanted to raise my son, but. I recognise this was not done out of a genuinely vindictive or-or  _ cruel _ intention, but I cannot talk to you right now. This is bigger than the both of us, it’s about a child that has a chance to know his parents, even if they’ve made colossal mistakes.”

Nicky twists the flesh on the underside of his forearm, hissing quietly, trying to ground himself desperately. Andy is staring at him through red rimmed eyes, hands shaking as she grabs serviettes to dab at her eyes. He lets her finish before he continues.

“I can’t talk to you right now, I can’t look at you until we know where he is. I never relinquished my rights to him as a parent even in the wake of what you did. I want you to still look, in records, anywhere you can, for traces of him. Legally, of course. But I want you to relay this through Quynh, okay? If you need us, talk to Quynh.”

She nods and sniffles a bit, shoulder’s curling in a defensive manner. 

“This is not forever, this is just so I can look at you without feeling like I’m going to scream and cry, okay?”

And then he’s gone, he’s behind the wheel of the car that he and Joe own, screaming into his own elbow and slamming his hands against the steering wheel. He breathes heavily, the air whistling in his throat as he tries to calm himself down enough to drive back home to his family. He turns the car on and drives. 

During this drive he absolutely doesn’t think:  _ will my child look like her? Will I look into his face and see her looking back? Will I see something completely new?  _

An even worse train of thought that he definitely does not think:  _ will I look into my son’s face and see all the hurt and damaged parts of myself looking back? _

\--

Sebastien is scared. 

He has been sitting on this chair at the Social Services building for  _ hours _ now (not really, but it felt like it when he was exposed and out in the open for everyone to stare at him) and he really wants to sit on the ground under his chair to hide and stay safe but the tall black man (“I’m James, Sebastien, it’s very nice to meet you.”) had told him to sit on the chair until he came back. 

He hasn’t come back yet. Sebastien has decided he will do some of his workbook while he’s here, so that Ma’am wont get angry at him when he’s inevitably taken back. He can be good, he can. He has to bring his legs up awkwardly so that he can get a hard surface to write on and still stay on the chair. It’s awkward and uncomfortable but he does a whole exercise, only having to read the words out to himself over and over again a few times. He only has to rub out some wonky letters and numbers a few times as well. 

He still doesn’t know what’s happening, when he was picked up early from school by Mister James instead of taking the bus to Milford Street like he usually does. The change has made his belly feel tight and angry and his hands shake. He  _ knew _ he shouldn’t have waved to Mister Nicolo and the other man, but they were nice and they thought he was nice enough to want to invite over! He had to be nice, otherwise he wouldn’t be allowed to go over even though Ma’am had yelled and screamed at him, throwing things at him after she had caught him at the fence. He rubs at his chest where one of the books had hit him. It was  _ still _ sore and a sickening purple colour and tender to touch. 

When he first got here, Mister James had taken him into a room with a camera and asked him if he had any bruises or wounds that had come from Ma’am and Sir. Sebastien was leery and nervous, not wanting to get them in trouble but also wanting to show Mister James his chest. He decided that it was better to show him and if he has to go back to Ma’am and Sir, maybe they would know not to do it again and he will be okay. Mister James had hissed when Sebastien had lifted his shirt a bit to show the big bruise. 

“Sebastien, can you tell me what happened when you got this bruise? You won’t get in trouble, we just need to know so we can get you some help and make sure it doesn’t happen again, alright?”

He smiles, and Sebastien purses his lips to decide whether or not he should tell before deciding that, yes, he should. 

Mister James takes pictures and listens to him when he tells him what happened, even talking about Mister Nicolo and Nile next door. They were important to the story because they had invited him to jump on Nile’s trampoline but they didn’t know he wasn’t allowed to go anywhere because they had  _ just _ moved and obviously couldn’t have known! 

Mister James nods sympathetically but asks him if he goes to play at  _ anyone’s _ house? And that throws him off, because wasn’t he not allowed to go to places without his case manager’s permission? That’s what he thought was how it would be because he doesn’t have any  _ real _ parents so it was just a permanent ‘no, you cannot go to this’? He’s confused and Mister James must have seen this because he got him something nice to eat and a bottle of soda from the vending machine in the lunchroom of the building before sitting him down outside the office that he was working in.

He thinks he knows what’s going to happen and it’s a new placement so he will be getting new writing books for a new school, so he takes out his lined writing book to draw in. He decides to draw a big lion because they learned about them today in class, he and Emily did, with their big mane and big teeth and a loud roar. It would be very cool to have one as a pet, he thinks! Other than the killing and eating you bit! 

He’s drawing a zebra, pressing the lead of his pencil hard to make the stripes dark when Mister James comes out, still talking on his phone as he does so.

“Yes, it’s no problem, Quynh, I’ll drop him off. Better than doing the paperwork this minefield is about to produce,” he chuckles and hangs up. 

He squats in front of Sebastien, who immediately squints to try and work out why. 

“Do you like ice cream, Sebastien?” Mister James asks, holding his hands in a prayer position while lowering himself to Sebastien’s height. 

Sebastien nods, clutching his writing book tighter. 

“Do you want to get a scoop with me before I take you to your new placement? I promise you’ll be excited about this one,” he smiles nicely. 

Sebastien is  _ very _ interested (and hopes Mister James continues to be his case manager, because his last one was  _ mean _ and he never saw her) and nods his head rather quickly. He quickly but slowly packs his backpack and pulls it onto his shoulders before clipping the front clips up that keep it in place easy. 

He grabs Mister James’ offered hand and they leave the Social Services building.

\--

Telling Joe about what Andy had done was like setting off an emotional bomb. Joe had listened carefully and intently but Nicky could pick up his tells, even through the hysterics that he had broken down into after they had put Nile to bed for the night. Joe had wanted to do all sorts of things, had wanted to go to the Social Services building right then and there and demand the return of Nicky’s, of  _ his _ , son. He had left their bedroom when he was sure that Nicky would be okay, to make some calls to some lawyer friends from when he practiced exclusively in Philadelphia, all who would be willing to come down to help them get his child back. 

Nile had snuck in, after sensing something was wrong, and they all slept together for that first night of abject grief. A cuddle pile to sleep in, doing her best to keep the only parents she has safe. 

It’s been a few days and he can say he’s  _ better _ but he’s not functional as he was before the big reveal. Having more trouble getting out of bed, getting his thoughts away from his son. Just. Overall functioning had been subpar. 

He takes his time to pick up his phone because he’d been crying again. He never seemed to stop now. Joe was worried but he didn’t want to say anything and potentially make Nicky feel like he couldn’t express himself. He loved the older man with everything in him and never, ever thought that him being worried about him being too emotional and unwell was him saying he couldn’t express himself. Had taken Joe’s face into his hands and kissed his cheeks, his forehead, his nose.  _ I love every part of you, even if you think it’s overbearing, _ he had said and Joe had thrown his arms around him and hugged him tight for a long time before going to pick Nile up from school. 

Quynh was on the other end and somehow even she could make his throat close up because of her relationship with Andy but. She was looking out for him with regards to Sebastien which he felt guilty over, having caused all this fuss, only to forget he even existed. He sends a prayer to God that he may be forgiven and that the boy is safe. 

Never let it be said that God doesn’t work in mysterious ways, because Quynh was ringing to talk about said boy.

“Nicky, it’s Quynh. First off, Andy told me what she told you and I want to say I’m so sorry and I know you need time, but you did express interest in fostering Sebastien and honestly, you’re my only hope right now because you’re the only person available  _ to _ foster him, with his previous foster home being investigated,” it all comes rushing out of her and breathes loudly after the mad rush of words. 

Nicky gapes and takes a moment to compose himself. 

“Yes, Joe and I are still interested in fostering him, when were you going to drop him off, so we can be ready?”

There’s rustling on the end of the line. 

“Is this afternoon okay? We literally have nowhere to put him, Nicky, again I absolutely wouldn’t be here begging you if I had no other choice. Every other kid from the home has been shuffled but because he’s special needs and you’re both equipped to handle special needs kids, you’re the only one on the list at such short notice.”

Nicky looks at the clock on the side table, which reads that it is 3:25 in the afternoon. Joe would probably just be pulling away from the school to come back home. 

“Give us two hours, at least? Just so we can get Nile and his room ready.”

“Absolutely fine, James has already resigned himself to days of overtime dealing with the investigation and paperwork, he’ll take Sebastien out for an ice cream and then bring him over so he isn’t nervous, that good?”

Normally Nicky wouldn’t allow desserts so close to dinner for anyone in the household, but the last few days have been trying and somehow he doesn’t think Sebastien will be very hungry that night. 

“Yes that’s absolutely fine, you have our address, yes? We’re right next door to his last placement…”

“Yeah, we do, Nicky, I’ll be seeing you later this week at some point, to discuss Sebastien’s schooling and modifications that may need to be made. Bye!”

Nicky says “bye” back to her and ends the call, his hand landing on the bed with a muffle thump. Jesus Christ, this fucking week. He heaves himself up off the bed and gets to work tidying and laying out Sebastien’s room until Joe and Nile get back. 

“Hon, why are you making the spare bed?” Joe says cautiously. Nicky knows what he’s thinking, that he’s gone a bit loopy, and internally rolls his eyes but tells him the good news. There  _ will _ be a new child, in about two hours, living with them. 

“So they approved us for Sebastien?” Joe asks, eyes crinkling as he grins. Nicky nods and continues to prop up the bland looking room into something inviting when Nile trundles in with an armful of toys that she puts on the bed. 

“I got all my good toys, so that Sebastien could have some as well! It’s not fair that he doesn’t have any toys and I don’t really use these anymore so I think he should have them!” 

She beams at Nicky and Joe, gap toothed little smile sweet as can be. Nicky rushes over and lifts her into his arms, bear hugging her in the way that she always liked. 

“What did we do to have such a sweet and thoughtful girl as our daughter? A gift from God, you are!” Nicky exclaims, bolstering his voice with his accent some, making her blush and throw her arms around his neck. He presses a kiss to her cheek and they move out into the living room, Nile sitting on the ground drawing at the coffee table and Joe sketching. Nicky is anxiously making something easy to have in the fridge in case Sebastien and the others get hungry (knowing his luck, they will be  _ very _ hungry and he will have to make a full meal anyways.)

The doorbell rings. Joe looks up, at the door and then at Nicky. Nicky puts the knife down into the sink. 

Go time. 

\--

Joe is nervous to meet his new foster kid for the first time. It had been almost six years since he’d last fostered any child, Nile being the one and only, but he wanted to do good for this one, however long they had him for. The case worker, James Copley, as he introduced himself to be, was a tall black man with a kind smile, in his forties and with obvious experience. Sebastien hung around behind him like a young koala does its mother, but never explicitly reaching out for the comfort of physical touch. James was explaining how he’d need to come back with some paperwork for them to sign as per the transference of temporary custody to them and to talk about the fact that they may have to opt for an intensive home schooling program, if the outcomes of testing with a child psychologist do not go well this week. 

“What do you mean, he needs to have testing done? He’s alright isn’t he?” He can see Nicky is nervous already after that, ringing his hands subtly. Joe grabs one of them in his own and holds it. Nicky is shaking. 

Sebastien is watching him from behind James, little ice blue eyes solemn and grabbing on to his, piercing in the same way that Nicky’s eyes had pierced his when he’d run into him in the cafe down from their college, all those years ago. Picking you up and shaking you down with just a look, but Sebastien hasn’t managed to turn it into a weapon like Nicky has. 

Joe smiles at Sebastien as Nicky and James continue talking about examinations and appointments and legal issues. There’s a small twitch in the boy’s lips and a slight crinkle and he thinks  _ aha! I’ve got you now, you’ve just seen much too much for a little boy! _ Glad that he had grabbed one of the toys Nile had dumped on Sebastien's bed, he moved slowly and beckoned him away from James so that he could kneel down to be at his height. 

Sebastien clutches the straps of his backpack tightly, Joe can see the whites of his little knuckles as he edges closer. Joe takes out the heavy, metal toy car and puts it in his palm and offers it to him. Sebastien slowly comes closer. 

“Me?” His little voice is crackly but still high pitched with infancy and the fact that he doesn’t use it much from what he has heard. Joe jolts a little, not expecting it to be what it was. 

“F-for me?” Sebastien asks again, lips trembling as he twitches all over. He obviously wants to grab it but doesn’t want to until he knows he won't get hurt for taking something that might not even be for him. 

Joe is so, so sad for this boy and only hopes he and Nicky can do better for him than he has had before.

“Yes, it’s for you, it’s okay,” Joe says and Sebastien creeps forward until he is close enough to be able to grab the car but still far enough away to feel safe. He takes the car from his hand, politely, and then slowly moves away from Joe. 

He jumps when Joe’s knees crack getting up out of the position he was in and he scurries quicker back behind James.

Joe moves back to his husband and listens back in.

“This boy has been classed as special needs in the system for a long time now, he was abandoned and we had a severe lack of reputable neonatal foster carers so he spent a long time in the hospital being cared for before being moved to his early placements,” James says with a sigh and takes off his glasses. “I wish I could say that this was the first time this has occurred for this boy but it isn’t. He’s had atrocious luck and we’re hoping if nothing else, you guys will be able to give him a soft place to land for a good while so that we can work to unravel some of the mess ups. So, personally, I just want to thank you for taking him in at such short notice because it helps me not have to decide whether to place him in a group home.”

“Placing him with us would never have been an issue, we’ve just had some… family issues come up that had side tracked us, is all,” Nicky speaks slowly, the way he does when speaking Italian would be much easier for him than english but he can’t. 

Sebastien has come out from standing solely behind James to standing by his side, playing with the toy car, a unique look on his face. His face is cast in shadow in just a way that he can see the shape of his nose, the way he purses his lips a certain way and he jolts internally. 

No. Surely not. It couldn’t be, not just falling into their laps like this. Surely not. 

He looks again and he  _ sees _ . He sees Nicky, in the size and slope of his nose, sees Andy in the shape of his eyes, sees them both in the shape of his face. Sees neither of them in the colour of his hair (but then again nobody has seen pictures of Andy as a little girl, abandoned in the system before she was a year old.)

It’s like there’s an electrical jolt running through him, like he’s cracked some insurmountable code. It’s him.  _ It’s him. _

The boy turns to him fully, face partially shrouded in shade from the setting afternoon sun, looking at him, watching him with Nicky’s blue, blue eyes. 

_ Hello _ , Joe thinks breathlessly,  _ hello _ .


	3. Chapter 3

Sebastien thinks being scared has become something of a ritual when interacting with this family. He was scared of them the first time when they were moving in, when they met at the fence in the backyard, and in the schoolyard too. He thinks maybe it isn’t so much them as individuals but what they embody and seem to have in spades; love, stability and each other. 

Standing in the enormous living room of their house he thinks,  _ maybe I am not made to belong in these spaces _ .  _ Maybe I am made for the tiny small places between washing machines and in closets. I do not have much to give back _ . 

The man who is not Nicolo stares at him with some indefinable look on his face, like he is a problem to solve. He probably is but it makes him uncomfortable and he wants to move behind Mister James and leave with him. He doesn’t want to stay here so close to his old placement that Sir or Ma’am could march over and get him in the night. 

The adults have finished talking and they introduce themselves to him.

“Hello, Sebastien, it’s good to see you, I’m Nicky if you remember?”

He nods. 

“Hi, Sebastien, I’m Yusuf, but you can call me Joe,” the staring man smiles and reaches his hand out to shake. 

A beat passes before Sebastien voluntarily shakes his hand. It is big, broad and warm and engulfs his own. It is nice to hold. 

The girl, Nile, comes up to Nicky and she waves at him. He’s nervous and can’t look, eyes jumping away from her face. 

“Sebastien, you’ll be staying with Nicky and Joe, as well as Nile, for hopefully a long while but you won’t be going to school until we have a talk, okay?” Mister James says kindly with his hand on Sebastien’s shoulder. “Your school did some wrong things that they shouldn’t have and we have to make sure you’re alright enough for school before you can come back.”

“What ‘bout Em’ly?” He says quietly with his face and head dipping into the straps of his backpack. What if they do something to Emily because of him? Nobody knows how to talk to Emily, she won’t be able to say what’s happened. 

“Emily? Oh, Emily Talbot? She’s been removed from the school by her parents, to be placed in a special school with people that know how to communicate and teach with her properly,” Mister James says kindly and Sebastien nods, shuffling down under his backpack like a turtle would retreat into its shell.

“Is Emily your friend?” Nicky asks kindly, inquisitive eyes watching Sebastien.

“Emily was the other autistic child in the special education area with Sebastien, non-verbal but Sebastien managed to make friends with her. She’s been with him in the unit for two years now.”

Sebastien mumbles.

Nicky’s eyes are on him again, the blue pinning him down again. “What was that, Sebastien?”

“If they just talked to us, they could figure out how to talk to Emily, it’s not hard,” Sebastien mumbles louder, getting more anxious with all eyes on him. He wants to leave. 

“Do you like school?” Nile asks him from where she holds her fathers’ hands.

He looks at them and feels that hole in himself open wider. This will not be a good placement, not when they’re already a family like this. He is a burden and will never be a part of a family, he doesn’t know why they bothered to volunteer. 

“Not really,” Sebastien replies slowly to her question. 

He feels the bubbles of the  _ anger _ and  _ rage _ bubble up, all from these thoughts. Why did he have to be abandoned as a baby, why didn’t he get to be adopted, why, why,  _ why _ .

He clenched his fists and is breathing heavier. Nicky is watching him, he doesn’t think the man ever stopped. It makes him more angry. He wants to yell and scream and stamp his feet. _Stop_ _looking at me,_ he wants to yell and punch the man. _You’re scaring me, leave me alone_. 

He knows it doesn’t make sense, he  _ knows _ , but he still runs to find somewhere to hide, anywhere, in this great cavernous house. 

\--

Joe isn’t surprised when the boy takes off, there one second and gone the next, climbing the stairs, little feet pattering to hide. Joe sighs because it’s a sign the placement is going to be  _ hard _ , especially with what he thinks he knows about the boy. Nile looks concerned and a tiny bit afraid, while Nicky has a  _ look _ on his face, like he just wants to  _ understand _ . 

James Copley just sighs and takes his glasses off to clean them before putting them back on and motioning them to sit on the lounges that make a formation in front of the television and are in sight of the kitchen. Once they’re all sitting (Nicky has sent Nile into the office to play on Joe’s laptop because this is the dirty, gritty part of fostering: the abject reveal of how much the system has already ruined these children) James pulls out the file that they’ve all been dreading to look at. It’s thick which is never a good sign but it’s also battered, which means it’s been constantly pulled out and reviewed, over and over.

“Sebastien isn’t a bad child,” James opens with as he looks like he’d rather be in bed asleep at this moment. “He may have enlarged, explosive reactions but he is not a bad child. The service should have inquired into his schooling placement and former placement earlier.”

“There’s a lot of stuff you guys should have done but it’s nearly impossible to do with your undercut budget,” Nicky says both sagely and snidely, an amazing feat. 

“Yes, there is, I won’t deny you that, Nicky, but there is a lot that’s occurred in his early life, from his abandonment as a baby, to the lack of psychological follow up that make it imperative you’re not going into this placement with the idea that you can fix everything that’s wrong with him. There are diagnoses that he has that are not simple mistakes by the system, a lot of how he is right now  _ is _ how he his; he can only get familial placement support, therapeutic support and occupational therapy to give him the skills he needs in his life,” James leans forward and clasps his hands together in front of him and takes the time to stare at them both. 

“Is there any information on his abandonment as a newborn? Have you tried finding his parents, even now?”

Joe cannot help himself, it’s the lawyer in him, trying to pick apart for answers, for clues, in underhanded ways, making the person think he was on their side when he wasn’t at all. It makes him sick to think about, really, about what he did in the courtroom of his career but maybe his skills can be of use now.

“All we know is that he was abandoned at the convent of the Sisters of the Book, who cared for him for a few days before he was able to be admitted to hospital. I don’t know why it took the service so long to admit him to hospital but it did. The sisters even offered up the last name he has, as there were a lot of French nuns among them, who came to America following the Second World War,” James jostles himself a bit to try and get comfortable and then starts again. “They likely were allowed to keep him for a few days because they had run a small orphanage prior to the heavy reliance on foster carers. But that is all I know until he starts being placed into one or two neonatal fosterers and then bounced.”

The boy has had next to no stability, it’s any wonder he doesn’t know what the hell to do when he has all the attention on himself. He peaks at Nicky who’s clutching the arm of the sofa with a death grip, eyes wide. 

“Sebastien’s on the spectrum and has a couple of other diagnoses, mainly relating to attachment and post trauma, but the most important one to understand is he’s autistic and he’s already traumatised and you will need to modify your interactions and how you respond to him,” James has finally stopped moving his hands but is still staring at them both. “He’s a good boy, don’t think he isn’t. Have patience.”

He gets up and gathers the file to himself, closing it all up with a sense of finality that they never usually get. They get up with him and he holds a hand out to shake theirs, solid and reassuring, before heading to the front door with them. He opens it and walks out, but stops before walking too far down the stairs up to their front door.

“Be well and keep him safe,” he says, something inexplicably sad in his eyes. 

\--

Sebastien is hiding under the bed, pressed close to the wall when Mister Nicolo and his husband come in quietly to the room he’s hiding in. They don’t say anything but they don’t force him to come out, his little heart pounding, curled with his backpack in front of him like a shield.

“Sebastien, we know you’re scared but we just want to talk to you, get to know you. We know you haven’t had a good run with new placements but we promise, we just want to know you,” Mister Nicolo says quietly, sitting down on the ground, cross legged and arms limp. 

Sebastien watches carefully as Joe sits down as well, holding his husband’s hand. He blinks slowly, trying to reconcile how all of the other placements he’s had have acted when he’s done this and none of it lines up. They always get mad at him for running but never show him anything to suggest he didn’t have to otherwise. 

“You’re scary,” Sebastien says quietly from under the bed, still clutching the toy car in his hands. “Nobody listens to me.”

There’s silence for a beat. 

“We’re listening to you. We want to listen to you.” 

Sebastien rolls the car a bit, the wheels spinning, as he chews on that. His stomach feels very tight and he’s getting that distant feeling, like he’s watching himself from very far away. The one he gets when he looks into the mirror sometimes and doesn’t recognise who’s looking back at him. The one he sometimes gets when Sir or Ma’am would yell at him. He hums and rolls the car quietly.

“Okay,” Sebastien says quietly and starts to shuffle out. His sneakers are scuffed and leave slight residue on the floor, he notices distantly. He squirms to get out from under the steel frame of the bed and blinks. 

They’re looking at him and he simply sits there looking back at them. Joe gets up and offers his hand out to him. Sebastien-who-isn’t-really-Sebastien reaches out and grips it. 

\---

The boy is sitting at their dining table, slowly eating some spaghetti that he had made earlier with Joe and Nile, and Nicky doesn’t know what to do. The wild oscillation between explosive anger and fear and quiet, lethargic compliance and thousand yard stares, it all makes him very worried. He knows he has to wait for the information they disseminate from the boy’s file to be given to him but it doesn’t stop the worry. Nicky is cleaning dishes at the sink, facing the dining table, watching them all very carefully. 

Nile looks at Sebastien with a tiny scrunch of her nose, the one she gets when she’s thinking about something but Joe picks up on it and silently nudges her with a foot under the table and she quickly stops. She’s a good girl, but as all children do, she lacks the ability to mask her behaviours as well as they should be when secretly watching someone. Nicky loves her but she isn’t built for subtle spy work, too much like Joe with his open face which still surprises him to this day that he managed to be successful in the courtroom.

Finishing with the dishes after having taken Sebastien’s plate quietly and leaving them in the rack to dry, Nicky moves slowly to the table to not set Sebastien on edge. The moment he sits down in his seat, Sebastien pipes up, surprising him. 

“Thank you, mister Nicolo, it was very nice,” he says quietly, sounding like he was reading off a script to him, eyes and hands on the table. 

“You’re welcome, Sebastien,” Nicky smiles at him. Even if the speech wasn’t anywhere near natural, he’d take it. It was  _ something _ . 

His eyes flick up to Joe and back down again, nervous. His leg is bouncing, the movement running through the floor and up the table and chairs. He’s  _ very _ nervous. 

“Who wants dessert?” Joe says suddenly, grabbing Nile and lifting her bodily out of her seat and setting her on the floor with a flourish. 

There’s ice cream for the children in the freezer but the tiramisu for Joe and him will come out once the children are in bed and asleep. Joe has a hard enough time saying no to Nile over chocolates, indulging her in alcoholic tiramisu would be a step too far. 

Nile is helping Joe scoop out ice cream into bowls, giggling when Joe lifts her up to get sprinkles and topping. 

“What topping do you like, Sebastien? Chocolate sauce or sprinkles?” Nile asks, as she uses all her strength to run the spoon through the ice cream before Joe takes it from her, laughing, and puts it in the microwave for ten seconds to soften. 

Sebastien doesn’t answer immediately, his eyes sliding to Nicky before looking back at her. 

“I don’t know, I’ve never had any toppings on my ice cream before. Except for today with mister James, but that was gummy bears…” He trails off awkwardly, clutching his feet. 

“It’s alright, Seb, you can have both tonight, and so can you Nile,” Joe preempts her asking, taking the ice cream out of the microwave and letting Nile scoop her own out under his watchful eye. Sebastien jolts at the nickname, blinking rapidly, little hands clenching before relaxing again.

Nicky leans back in his chair and takes the scene in. His husband and daughter are happy and healthy and he  _ hopes _ their foster child can be happy and healthy too. 

Joe scoops out some ice cream for Sebastien and adds a liberal amount of sprinkles and chocolate sauce before herding Nile over to the table to eat. Nicky accepts a bowl of a single scoop to portray a united front, and they all eat. Sebastien stirs vigorously, mixing the sauce and sprinkles into his rapidly melting ice cream, eyes locked on the syrup slowly colouring the ice cream brown. 

It’s nothing new to Nicky, having another child, but something about it fascinates him. 

Sebastien catches him looking and turns and blinks his big blue eyes at him before his gaze falls over his shoulder, seemingly surprised as he is that Nicky is staring, too. Nicky smiles and a few arduous moments later there is a miniscule quirk to the boy’s lips, mimicry in the purest sense but something of a treasure all the same. 

In no time at all, both Nile and Sebastien are both finished and it’s bordering on eight in the evening, only half an hour off Nile’s bedtime and the bedtime they want to set for Sebastien. They ask said boy whether or not he has a bath or a shower, and he looks up at them blinking. 

“I can shower and use soap and wash my own hair,” he says with a bit of a pride puff of his chest. 

“That’s good! You’re very mature!” Joe smiles at him and exclaims in the sweetest voice. “You can keep doing that, but we’ll just make sure the water is the right temperature and that you got all the soap off, is that okay with you, bud?”

Sebastien takes a moment to think and nods, lips pursed thoughtfully. He heads off to his room with Nicky following and starts to unpack his backpack, with only a couple sets of clothes and a very beaten soldier figurine. He grabs the only pair of pyjamas in the pile and looks up at Nicky, who smiles down at him. 

“Time to shower and time for bed. If you do a good job, Joe might even read you a story!”

\--

As Joe and Nicky were putting the children to bed, paying extra attention to the rituals and routines that Sebastien had, they did not notice the dark SUV parked across the road. They did not notice as the brown skinned man within it lights a cigarette as he turns up the volume of the listening device, scoffing at the kind words and encouragement the two men give to their children. 

_ You could almost feel sorry for the poor bastards, _ he thinks to himself as he taps his jeaned leg and listens to the clink of toothbrushes and the murmur of goodnights.  _ They don’t know what’s gonna hit ‘em.  _

\--

Joe lasts two days, holding onto his revelation close to his chest. He doesn’t know whether to tell Nicolo about it; doesn’t know whether it could make things catastrophically worse than they already are for the man. He ponders this as he takes the garbage out, noticing for the first time a car that he hasn’t seen in the few months they’d lived in the house across the road. His stomach clenches, like it does when there’s something  _ off _ . But the car isn’t doing anything, there’s no one he can see inside it, so he brushes it off to head back inside to Sebastien, who’s dressed in new clothes that they had gotten him the previous day. 

They’re waiting for Quynh to arrive with the paperwork for a school transfer or the ability to homeschool the boy; it would be easier to do it themselves or at least pay someone to come into the house and teach him so they knew for certain that he was learning, even if it drained them a bit. Especially if he’s Nicky’s boy. He deserved the best possible chance to thrive and be who he wanted to be, despite his beginning. 

His beginning. The thing that had been eating Joe alive for the previous few days, remembering what Copley had told them about Sebastien’s unfortunate start in life and what Nicky had said to him about what Andy had done with his child. 

Joe almost wanted to dye the boy’s hair dark and stare at him and see if it was like looking at Andy or Nicky. 

He looks like Nicky but his mannerisms screamed Andy, all introverted thinking and harsh faces. The eyes are Nicky’s though, through and through. 

Joe wipes the benches clean of crumbs that had fallen onto them while they had made toast for Nile and simple cereal for Sebastien. They had started to get the hang of his routines and habits, Nicky carefully writing them down so that they could refer back to them at any point. He’s starting to come out of his shell around them, opening up to brief moments of physical contact, like them holding his hand across the road or showing him how to do something. 

Joe is watching the boy write wonky letters in a workbook that he’s adamant that he keeps doing, quietly asking them for help if he needs it, when there’s a knock at the door. 

It’s Quynh, carrying a small box of donuts and he welcomes her in. She smiles and steps in and makes her way towards the kitchen.

“Nicky won’t be long, he’s just dropping off Nile at school. There’s also something I want to ask you,” Joe says and takes the box of donuts and puts them on the kitchen table. He tells Sebastien that he can have one but Sebastien just looks at him through a mop of white blonde hair and then goes back to his work.

“Of course, Joe, what is it that you wanted to talk about? Not something bad, I hope,” she looks concerned as he moves her closer to the front door.

“No, no, nothing bad. I just wanted to run an...idea past you without Nicky here,” he takes a deep breath and steels himself to speak the secret into the world; giving birth to a miracle or a nightmare depending on the outcome. “I think Sebastien might be Nicky and Andy’s boy.”

Quynh stands stock still, staring at him, mouth partially open. She blinks rapidly, mouth working, no words coming out. 

“Why-why do you think that?” Quynh finally says quietly, clutching her handbag tightly. 

“Everything adds up, Quynh, from the age to the convent they were both left at! If there were two babies left at a convent in the middle of the night, wouldn’t it be a bigger news story? There would be evidence of the both of them...There’s no evidence because of another boy because they’re  _ the same boy _ ,” he gestures wildly, hands moving this way and that. 

“The inconsistencies in Sebastien’s immediate early handling would fit with someone in the department being on the Merrick payroll and making sure he doesn’t get out from under them. Easier to torment Andromache with her child being harmed if they  _ were _ actually in control of where he was, nowhere good but nowhere terrible either,” she muses and moves to collapse in one of their chairs, looking stunned. 

“When were you going to tell me this?” Nicky says from behind them, clutching the keys to their car in his hands like they were the only thing in the world keeping him from tearing apart. 

“Nicky-”

“No, Joe,” Nicky says quietly, his eyes intense and his body stiff. “When were you going to tell me that you thought Sebastien was my son?”

“When I had evidence, I didn’t want to hurt you, getting excited that he was somebody he wasn’t. For you  _ and _ him, you deserve better than that,” he says firmly, moving towards Nicky who is still standing rigid and still in front of them. 

“The information matches up,” Quynh says, haggard and looking vaguely queasy. “The birth dates, the convent, it all matches up. Oh my god.”

She brings her hands to her mouth and half sobs into them. 

“I was here to talk about his schooling, not this. God. If this is happening, please, Nicky, let me call Andy, I know you don’t want to see her but  _ please _ , if it’s true and he’s your son he deserves to at least know what his mother looks like.”

  
  


Nicky was still ramrod straight, face pinched. Joe knew this was a war against his feelings as a parent of a child that he’d never been able to know the existence of and the very real need to protect the already traumatised boy in the kitchen. Joe moves to get near him but he puts a trembling hand up. 

“Enough. Andromache can come see him on the basis of figuring this out but there has to be consequences,” Nicky says with a hard voice. “Call her and get her here, Quynh. I’m going to check on Sebastien.”

He turns and walks into the kitchen with a stiff gait, hands still trembling. Joe follows him, while Quynh fumbles for her phone to call Andy. Walking in, he sees his husband talking with the boy who was looking at him through his mop of hair, blue eyes blink. 

“Do you want a drink, Sebastien? You can juice, a drink of milk or a cup of water, if you want,” Nicky says as he turns to the cupboard holding the glasses. 

Joe sits at the kitchen table quietly. 

“Are you really my dad?” Sebastien blurts out, loud for his usually quiet self, eyes the size of saucers and earnest to boot. 

Joe freezes and Nicky almost drops the glass he had halfway out of the cupboard, swinging around to look at the boy.

Sebastien blinks and looks away, out the kitchen window into the backyard with the trampoline that had been the beginning of this entire saga. 

“You talk really loud, wasn’t eavesdropping, promise,” the boy mumbles, eyes dropping to his workbook on the table. “I finished my work and you were talking about me. Does this mean you came back to get me?” 

Nicky’s face crumbles and Joe can fucking  _ see _ his heart breaking right in front of him. This was a nightmare and the only one who would come out of it worse for wear is the little boy sitting at the table because he’s the only one who couldn’t  _ understand _ . 

“Sebastien, we were talking about you, yes, but we don’t know whether or not you’re my son, but even if you weren’t, we would never send you away for that! Even if another child came into the house, we wouldn’t send you away, we care about you even though it’s only been a short time that you’ve been with us,” Nicky says, seated at the table diagonal from Sebastien. 

“We’re hoping to adopt you,” Joe says out of nowhere, without thinking. 

Nicky blinks at him, surprised because no, they definitely had not had the time to discuss this in the  _ three days _ that Sebastien had been with them. 

Sebastien’s big blue eyes blink bemusedly at them, trying to process the sheer amount of information coming his way in the last half hour. 

“If...if you adopt me, could I still be your son? Even if I’m not  _ really _ the right baby?” 

“Sebastien, you’re the right baby even if you weren’t biologically my son. You’re the right boy, you’re  _ our _ boy, okay?” Nicky presses quietly, in his ‘handling children’ voice. “We have someone special coming over in a little while, so we want to make sure you’re okay with that.”

“My mom? Do you think she would recognise me, even if I’m not a baby anymore?” Sebastien says hopefully, clutching his workbook tight, bouncing a little in his chair. 

“Maybe, Sebastien, maybe she might,” Nicky murmurs. 

“Well, she’ll be here in, ah, under twenty minutes with the way she sounded,” Quynh mumbles as she moves to sit beside Sebastien at the table. “She always speeds when she’s stressed, please don’t hold that against her. She’s been a wreck since she saw you at the cafe, Nicolo. I think this could be a miracle.”

She smiles at Nicky as she places her handbag on the table. 

“And hello to you, Sebastien, I hope you’ve been good while you’ve been here?”

“Yes, ma’am. I miss school though, even though I didn’t do much there. Is Emily okay?” Sebastien’s questions pour out of him and he takes on a more scripted sound. 

“Well, we’ll have a talk about school today and yes, Emily is okay, she’s doing very well,” She turns her smile on Sebastien who blinks at the glass of juice Nicky had placed in front of him. 

“Tell her about what we did yesterday, Basti, it was very exciting,” Joe says, internally delighted at the little wriggle the boy does at the nickname he had given him while they were shopping for clothes. 

“Miss Quynh, I got to go shopping! I got some new books on soccer and animals! And Mister Joe gave me a nickname!”

His little chest puffs out and Quynh chuckles. They encourage Sebastien to chatter, even if it starts to get a bit stilted and less lengthy with every minute that passes. Nicky is about to get him another glass of juice when there’s a knock at the door. Nicky freezes where he is, a brief hunted look coming over him before his face smooths out again to something devoid of emotion. 

Andy had arrived. 

\--

He feels a brief sense of absolute terror to come over him at the sound of the knock. He desperately doesn’t want to do this but he  _ has to _ . For the children. For himself. To be able to ever move forward from this horror story. He gets up abruptly but Quynh waves him off, heading to the door. 

“I should take Sebastien into the office,” Joe murmurs to him, grasping his arm and presses a kiss to his cheek. “I’ll stay with him and once you’re all ready, you’ll come get him and I. It would be much better if this was between the two of you with Quynh mediating, especially as his caseworker.”

He has to agree; Sebastien would feel frightened and under attack if he was out in the kitchen with them and they devolved into arguments or talked loudly. Joe has the ability to calm him down or keep him preoccupied on the computer with him while the grittiness of this nightmare is truly brought out into the light of day.

“Okay,  _ amore _ , take him and let him play on the computer, maybe one of the maths games that Nile likes? Get him set up on Mathletics? Or if he wants to do something else, he can do that for the day,” he says quietly as he sits back down at the table. Joe nods and moves out to get Sebastien from his room, having snuck out while they were all talking. He...he needs to do something. Anything. Frenetic anxious energy courses through his body. He jumps back up again. 

“I have to get tea and coffee, I’d rather not be impolite…” He murmurs to himself as he refills the kettle and puts it to boil.

The voices of Quynh and Andy get closer and he breathes deeper, thinking of his meditation podcasts desperately.  _ In, out, in, out, in, out- _

“Hey Nicky,” Andy says quietly, standing distinctly at least 6 feet from the table, obviously not wanting to intrude on the man even though Quynh had already moved back to the table and had taken her seat. 

“Hello Andy,” Nicky says quietly and thinks it’s a fucking miracle he hasn’t screamed today. The thread of his tolerance for anything more horrifically life altering is fraying at an increasingly fast rate. “Sit down, don’t just stand there.”

Andy obediently takes a seat, demure and without complaint. 

“So. We’ve obviously found similarities between Sebastien and your son,” Quynh says, eyes flicking between the two of them. “The issue is: are they the same boy or two boys who are unfortunate enough to share the same situations at around the same time?”

Andy looks down and hunches, making herself smaller, and he stares, eyes narrowing and his hands clenching. 

Quynh must notice because she clears her throat and they both snap to look at her, intensely and unwavering.

“I think there would be a very easy way, straight off the bat, that could help us tell if Sebastien is who we think he is. Andy, did your boy have any birthmarks that you can remember?” She says firmly.

Andy visibly thinks and then speaks, “he has one on his head, behind his ear, about the size of a spoon head,” she says nodding, “on his right side. It was pretty dark.”

Quynh nods.

“I’m going to go in and check and see if this mark is there, and if it’s not then we can continue looking at other avenues, as you are the biological parents and Nicky, you didn’t cede parental rights as you didn’t know about his existence. If this  _ is _ him, then it means you’ll need to file for custody, which  _ will _ bring up a legal case for you, Andy,” she says firmly, “though you likely won’t get legal custody, the court may not sever parental rights due to coercion. However, you will likely be required to submit a DNA test to verify his parentage before they let him out of State custody, even if you didn’t know, Nicky.”

Nicky nods, feeling better that he at least  _ knew _ the future game happening. Andy rubs her hands over her face, trembling. Nicky knows he has to say something otherwise he never will. 

“Andy,” he says and stops.

She looks up at him, blue eyes bloodshot from crying, and he takes her in finally. The way her clothing is bedraggled, the way she somehow looks even  _ more _ thin than she already is. Her cheeks are hollowed and she just looks  _ miserable _ and yes, he may not forgive her, but he doesn’t want to see her like this. 

“Stop worrying, I’m not going to-to deny you from seeing him, or anything, okay? I’m still angry at you and I will be for a long time but I can’t watch you run yourself into the ground like this, especially not when there’s someone who might genuinely need you to give your all for him. If,  _ if, _ Sebastien is our child then I’m not going to lock you out, but there are issues that have to be worked through. So just...take care of yourself, alright? He’ll pick up on what you’re projecting  _ very _ easily.”

Andy looks at him with wide, blue eyes he’s seen on Sebastien and  _ knows _ , without having to see proof, that Sebastien is their son. They’re too much alike not to be. Where Sebastien takes after Nicky in his emotions and stoicness, he takes after Andy in just about everything else. 

Andy is visibly trying to pull herself together so he turns to Quynh, who’s been watching them like a scientist would look at a specimen under the microscope. 

“I’m going to go into the office and talk with Joe and Sebastien, alright? Just hang tight,” she says firmly as she pushes off the kitchen table and disappears into said office, the door clicking shut softly. 

They sit in silence for a few long moments.

“Nicky, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry I did this to you, and to him, but I was terrified that they’d hurt him, or you, if you knew. They said they’d do all sorts of things to him if I kept him,” she whispers, eyes full of tears and staring at a point just beyond his shoulder. 

“You were with Joe and...and I guess I thought it would be better for all of us, but especially him, that he got a family that didn’t know where he came from, that only loved him. I never got that but I wanted that for him. The two parents, the stable home, the dog, all of it. I wanted that for him but I failed even in that and now he’s ruined like I was, couldn’t keep my only child safe from being brutalised by the same system that did it to me!”

She hits herself on her temple and he reaches across the table and grips her hand to stop her. 

“You didn’t fail Andy, you weren’t given a  _ choice _ of what to do. I don’t know what you did while you were pregnant or what they threatened you with to keep you quiet but I know you didn’t  _ fail _ . You left him with the women that raised you before you were moved into the system, you left him bundled in blankets in a basket to keep him safe. Not telling me you were pregnant and had had our son, that is morally bad but it’s  _ bad _ . The only ones in this situation that are  _ bad _ are the Merricks and those on their payroll.”

He’s out of breath by the time he’s done but he feels lighter, having been able to release some of the hot air that had been building up in his chest. Andy is staring at him, mouth slightly open, but quickly nods. 

“Thank you, Nicky, I know I don't deserve forgiveness, at least not this early, but thank you.”

A murmur rises from the study room, both Quynh and Joe’s voices mixing. Both he and Andy look at the door to see Quynh walking through, with Joe half out the door as he murmurs to Sebastien who seems to be budging on coming out. 

“Basti, it’s alright, it’s okay,” Joe says encouragingly and quietly, in his voice he uses for Nile when she cries out of nowhere. “Come on, it’s okay, Nicky will get you a soda, you’ll see.”

“Don’t want soda,” Sebastien mumbles as he sticks right close to Joe when they walk out, his little hand in Joe’s. He’s dawdling behind him but his blond hair peeks out around Joe’s waist, then just as quickly hides again.

Nicky hears Andy take a deep breath and he lets out the one he hadn’t known he’d been holding. 

Quynh walks up to the table and sits in her previous spot, placing her hands palm down and looking both of them in the eyes, back and forth. Her eyes and face are kind and he can tell nothing from them; his hands clutch each other on the table. 

“Please just tell us, Quynh,” Andy says quietly, sounding exhausted which isn’t surprising. 

“The birthmark was there, behind his ear.”

There’s a quiet, strangled noise from beside Nicky and his ears are ringing. His pulse is pounding in his ears, in tandem with the ringing, a horrific noise. But he’s staring at the space beside Joe’s hip, where Sebastien’s head is peaking around, little blue eyes staring, hands gripping onto Joe’s. 

He’s looking into his son’s eyes. He’s looking at his son’s face. The ringing is replaced with a giddy sort of happiness, almost manic. 

“Sebastien, why don’t you come meet, Andy, huh?” Joe says quietly, stepping aside and bringing the boy along with him. He stands in front of Joe like he’s being held for execution and it’s excruciating. 

He looks at Andy out of the corner of his eye; her eyes are wet with tears and she’s staring at the boy like he’s everything she’s ever wanted but also like she’s being stabbed at the same time. 

“Hi Sebastien, I’m Andy,” she says quietly, trying to smile but failing and giving a half hearted wave to him. “I’m your…”

“Andy’s your mom, Sebastien,” he says suddenly, solidifying the realness of this moment. “And I’m your dad.”

Sebastien looks between the two of them, suspicious.  _ Oh, god, please don’t have an episode right now, Sebastien, _ he thinks desperately, seeing the tell tale way his body bunches up and becomes rigid.  _ Please don’t, I’m sorry, I can’t take it. _

A look passes across the boy’s face, and the rigidness of his body drops away to a slump. He looks at them through his mop of blond hair that they have to get cut and-

“Do I get to stay? Are you going to send me away again?” 

He doesn’t think he’s seen someone collapse like skyscrapers do: level by level until there’s nothing left but rubble. He doesn’t think Andy can look any more like she wants to hurl herself off the top level of their house but she manages to persevere through it which, despite the nature of his anger and bitterness toward her, goes a long way to seeing that she truly meant what she had said. That she had no other choice but to leave Sebastien behind for everyone’s own good. How messy it has become. 

He lets Andy speak first, deferring to her at this moment. This is something only she can truly work toward making up for. Not that he doesn’t but it wasn’t really his fault now was it?

“You’re never leaving ever again, Sebastien. I will never stop saying this but I’m sorry I sent you away and I hope I can help you understand why I had to in the first place,” she says and by the end was just a murmur, her courage and strength sapped out of her. 

Sebastien’s eyes bore into the both of them and Nicky finally spoke up.

“I’m not sending you away either, Basti. I know there’s a lot of things I need to help you to understand and to understand about you but know I’m not sending you away.”

By the end of him speaking, Sebastien had crept closer to the table and was standing just a few feet from them both. He seems to decide something in his head, vivid blue eyes narrowed and his lips pursed (and isn’t that the spitting image of Andy, his mind reels) before he climbs onto the seat closest to them. He watches them closely, hypervigilant but trying of his own volition to get closer to them despite everything in his past saying he shouldn’t. 

“Did you know the roar of lions can be heard up to five miles away?”


	4. Chapter 4

Sebastien thinks maybe he liked it better when he  _ didn’t _ know who his parents were, with how everyone is now acting with him. Constantly asking him if he’s okay and if he needs anything, it’s making him nervous. He feels jealous, he thinks, again, of Nile because all of this happened when she was a baby and she didn’t have to know anything was wrong. He lashes out at them and runs, hiding away again. It wouldn’t surprise him if he’s sent away just from his behaviour over this. He still hasn’t forgotten that Sir and Ma’am are living next door; he’s not truly safe even if they want him to think he is. 

It’s one of those times that he’s hidden himself so well and for so long that they don’t expect him to go outside, let alone out the front door. 

It sends a spark of something through his belly and up his spine: he doesn’t have to listen to  _ anything _ they have to say. They’re not  _ really _ his parents, not yet. He doesn’t live with them all the time, he’s still in foster care like Mrs Quynh had told him three days ago, and can still be moved. 

_ “We know who you are now, Sebastien, but I still have to file some legal stuff so the government will know who you are and let you stay with Nicky and Joe.” _

_ “But what if I want to stay with Andy? What if I want to stay with my mom…” _

_ “I know you want to be with Andy too, but there’s so much happening with her, your dads, that it will take all I have to keep with them until you’re legally seen as theirs.” _

He closes the door quietly and sneaks down the stairs to the front yard. Electric delight sears through him: they don’t know where he is and he can do whatever he wants now. He looks up and down the street and there’s no cars except for a big SUV across the road, with windows so dark they’re pitch black. He doesn’t think anything of it because people do all sorts of stupid stuff that he doesn’t understand and starts to walk. 

He gets sidetracked from going very far by a tree that looks very funny in the neighbour’s yard. So much so that he doesn’t pick up on the footsteps rounding up on him until there’s cloth over his mouth, hindering him screaming, and he’s breathing in a sickly sweet scent. He scrabbles against whoever is holding him, the toy car dropping from his pocket onto the sidewalk in the fight, but the scent is too much and he blacks out. 

\--

“Hon, have you seen Sebastien?” 

Joe looks up at his husband’s question, concerned. He’d been on his laptop, looking through some legalities and precedents for the upcoming legal battle. There’s a harried look on Nicky’s face and it sets him on edge on principle. 

“I haven’t, have you checked all the cupboards and wardrobes? I know he likes to get in those…” Joe trails off, closing the lid of his laptop with a murmur. 

Nicky is ringing his hands and flushed in the face, looking more frantic with every second that passes. 

Joe is up, moving towards his husband, rubbing his arms up and down. “He can’t have left the house, he  _ knows _ not to leave the house,” Joe soothes him but has a rising bad feeling. Sebastien  _ knows _ not to leave the house but he’d become more and more erratic, quicker to outbursts and even quicker to aggressive silence. The knowledge had settled easy within the adults of their little family, and even Nile, but Sebastien hadn’t settled. He’d backslid some and it was painful to see because there was just  _ so much happening _ and the can of worms they opened became a pandora’s box. 

“I’ve checked all of upstairs and all of downstairs, Joe, I can’t find him! We have to look outside, what if he’s just outside?” Nicky tries to calm himself by thinking of  _ What Ifs? _ and all Joe can do is think of the negative outcomes of Sebastien going outside without an adult. 

Joe wraps an arm around Nicky as they hurry out the front door, looking everywhere they can for the little boy until there’s a muffled scream that reaches Joe from looking around the bins and the gates to the backyard. Joe runs and Nicky is on the ground clutching the toy car that the boy is never without voluntarily and it’s like the world is collapsing in on itself as Nicky is pushed over the emotional edge he had been teetering on for the last three days, bypassing shock entirely. He’s sobbing, clutching the car and clutching Joe. 

Joe manages to hold his husband closely and fish out his phone to make the heart wrenching call that has to be made. He dials in  _ 911 _ and presses call as Nicky’s hysterical crying amps up to an almost screaming pitch. 

_ “Hello, this is 911, how may I direct your call?” _

“Our foster son is missing, please help us!”

\--

Sebastien is groggy when he wakes up, his tongue tasting foul in his mouth and his arms and legs bound in front of him. He can’t see and he struggles, whimpering as the rope cuts into his arms and legs. The ground is cold around him and smells like the carpark of a shopping centre on a hot day. He wrinkles his nose and there’s a sharp burst of light through the material covering of his head and into his eyes that  _ hurts _ . 

He wants to go home. He wants Nicky and Joe. He wants to go  _ home _ . 

He starts to cry quietly curled up on the ground, too intense smells and sensations surrounding him. 

A foot kicks him in the stomach, winding him and making him gag on his tears. 

“Shut the fuck up! Jesus Christ, fucking whimpering like a dog. Are you a dog, retard?” A sneering voice speaks from above him, slimy feeling and making him whimper and shake his head. 

“N-no, I’m n-not,” Sebastien stutters, quietly, gripping his aching stomach. 

“Your mother was a bitch, though,” the voice muses and laughs at him as a heavy booted foot is set down on his neck and his breathing becomes a wheeze, frantic and terrified.  _ They’re going to kill me, _ he thinks hysterically.  _ They’re going to kill me and I’ll never get to go home. _

He cries harder, snot running out of his nose, tears soaking the material covering his eyes. 

“She’s  _ not! _ You don’t know anything! Shut up!” His voice is high pitched and wet with tears, hysteria and the boot crushing down on his throat. 

“Oh? Who do you think made sure you didn’t get to have a family, little boy?”

Sebastien pauses. He doesn’t know anything about this. Only what Nicky and Joe, and Mrs Quynh, have told him. He hasn’t even spoken to his mother, really, has just seen her speaking to the other adults and when she looks at him she just looks  _ sad. _ He doesn’t want to hurt her even though he’s brimming with questions and aching to reach out and convince himself she’s real and not something he’s made up inside his head. 

“No? No answer? Funny, your mother had no answer, too, when I told her if she didn’t get rid of you I’d feed you to my dogs,” the man muses at him and he cringes when he understands what the man has said to him. 

“Please stop, mister…” he whispers, curling himself up and away. His belly hurt and he felt sick but he didn’t want to do anything and make them more angry at him. 

“It’s Merrick. Mister Merrick to you, boy. Now your mother has been  _ very _ bad and gone back on what I said for her to do before you were born.”

“That’s not her fault, please--”

Merrick kicks him again before picking him up by his shirt and neck and he’s  _ choking _ , he’s scrabbling against the arm that’s holding him up but his hands aren’t strong enough and it’s hurting his chest to try and breathe, black spots dancing in his vision-

He’s dropped, wheezing and coughing on the dirty ground. Everything hurts and he doesn’t  _ understand _ .

“Pick him up,” Merrick sneers to the men who’ve come in after he started speaking. “We have a video to make.”

Sebastien is lifted by his arms and he  _ hurts, hurts, hurts _ -

Something is shoved over his head, big hands gripping on the back of his neck. He’s wriggling and squirming, the pressure of arms and body on him making it  _ agonising _ on his body. 

_ “Sit still or I’ll make you sit still!” _

He stops, dead still, as he’s forced into a chair. He still can’t see anything and he’s getting nervous, terrified and in pain. 

“Andromache,” Mister Merrick says with a  _ tsk _ , “it seems you’ve forgotten the deal we have talked about so easily. I remember it.  _ Don’t go near your son and nothing bad will happen. _ Very easy, but I suppose it’s too much for you.”

Before his self preservation could kick in, Sebastien starts to squirm and move in his seat.  _ Andy, Andy, Andy, _ his mind screams,  _ mother, mother, mother. _ He tries to say something through the material over his head and is rewarded by a fist cracking across his face, pain flaring into agony. His ears are ringing and something hot drips from his nose and he’s crying, fat tears rolling down his face to where the material is too close and drying to his face. 

“He’s inherited your tendency to ignore instruction,” Mister Merrick says, with a sinister edge. “He’ll die with it too if you don’t bring me one million dollars on Sunday the sixth, that is three days from now, at eleven pm in the car park of the Little Lake Park. Absolutely no cops or the kid gets it.”

He pauses after that, momentarily, then sighs annoyedly. 

“I suppose I have to give you proof he’s alive, well,” the cover is torn off his head violently and he cowers against the penetrating lights all around him, “there, he’s fine, make sure to bring me my money or he’ll soon be  _ not fine _ .”

Sebastien squints against the harsh light of the room and begins to cry, yet again, terrified and alone. 

\---

Nicky is beside himself, but he no longer shows it. He has moved from openly emotional to cold and aloof to cope with the stress of the situation. Sebastien is  _ gone _ , disappeared, and he can feel it in his bones that he’s not okay. There’s something screaming in him to tear the town apart looking for his boy and not stop until he does so. He’s sitting on the lounge, beside Joe who’s holding a sleep Nile, who had only fallen asleep after she had cried herself into it. 

He feels like a terrible father, not being able to focus on his daughter right now, his attention being torn every which way. 

There’s a noise, like something being pushed through the old letter slot on the door before dropping to the ground, and footsteps quickly moving away in the dark of the night. 

Quynh, who’s sitting at the kitchen table with Andy who’s unable to function beyond answering the questions of the officers who had come, gets up and waves them away as she moves toward the front door. 

An AMBER alert had been issued for Sebastien but it was next to useless when they didn’t know whether he had wandered off, been taken or what. Andy had looked more and more like she was seconds from just snapping. Nicky could empathise because it was the same way he was feeling. The only thing they hadn’t participated in was an all out fight over who was to blame. They had to find him first.

“It’s an envelope with a USB stick,” Quynh says when she gets back to the living area. “Joe, where’s your laptop, we have to check it out...just in case,” she says quietly, holding it as little as possible in case it’s evidence.

“It’s on the bookshelf near the door to the office,” Joe murmurs, pointing and Nicky gets up abruptly. He needs to know what this is. Joe does too, but only after laying Nile on the lounge and putting one the blankets that were hanging around over her little body. 

Quynh grabbed the laptop and a pair of scissors to cut the envelope open instead of ripping it and is setting them both on the kitchen table by the time they get there.

“We don’t know who it’s from. Just a precaution,” she tells them with calm words but a pinched, tight face. Everyone was affected by this, but everyone in the house was  _ family _ and a little someone was relying on them to find him and bring him home, safe and sound. 

Quynh cuts open the envelope and there’s no letter but a cheap USB stick drops out and onto the kitchen table. Joe’s computer has booted up and is ready for it to be inserted. Quynh does so and they gather around her, watching her work. There’s only one file on the entire thing and it’s titled  _ sebastien_misses_you.mp4 _ .

Fear courses cold down Nicky’s spine, a sick feeling creeping up over him. Quynh presses play and the video loads up. 

It abruptly starts with a small hooded figure wriggling and moving about on a chair with two large men holding them down. The nauseous feeling increases when one of the men, a darker skinned man, yells at the figure.

_ “Sit still or I’ll make you sit still!” _

Bile is definitely rising in his throat and he grips Joe’s hand harder, oppressively tight, nails embedding into the palms of his hands. The figure goes deathly still and he  _ knows _ it’s Sebastien under the hood,  _ his little boy- _

A man steps out in front of Sebastien, dressed in obnoxious exercise clothing, not even attempting to hide his identity from them. He has a weasel face and an arrogance that made Nicky itch to throw punches even if he hasn't done so for decades.

_ “Andromache, it seems you’ve forgotten the deal we have talked about so easily.” _

Andy growls on the other side of Quynh, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides as she watches her sins come home to roost.

_ “I remember it.  _ **_Don’t go near your son and nothing bad will happen._ ** _ Very easy, but I suppose it’s too much for you.” _

Quynh pauses the video and Andy’s hand slams onto the hardwood table with a loud  _ “fuck!” _ that makes both he and Joe jump where they’re standing. They turn their eyes back to the screen in time to see a fist crack across the hooded face of Sebastien and everything that Nicky had been keeping down is rising up fast, fast,  _ fast. _

“I’m gonna be sick.” he wheezes before racing to the kitchen sink and heaving, vomiting what little he’d had in the last day to eat. The bile burns his mouth as he brings it up and he slams on the tap to bring blessed water to wash it away, wash around his mouth and wash the remains of his vomiting to the garbage disposal. Joe comes up close to him and in his panicked movements and is rubbing his back, murmuring nonsense to him, to help him calm down. 

“I’ve failed him, Yusuf,” he moans as he rests his overheated forehead against the cold metal of the sink. “I’m just like everyone else in his life; good for nothing and letting him get hurt!”

“You know that’s not true, Nicolo,” Joe says, pointedly using Nicky’s full name. “He went outside without us and he  _ knew _ not to do that, Nicolo, this isn’t anything you, nor I, have done wrong to cause.”

“Why does it feel like it is, though,” he says quietly, against the sink before pulling himself up to stand straight. 

“It feels like it’s your fault because you’re his  _ father _ , as it would make me feel like it’s my fault if this happened to Nile,” he says rationally, reaching out and holding Nicky’s hands in his own, running his thumbs over his knuckles. “I would be more worried if you  _ didn’t _ feel this way, my love. This is terrible but we are  _ going to get him back _ , alright?”

He nods as his husband brings his arms around him, holding him tight. He buries his face into the junction between his neck and his shoulder, letting his tears fall, Joe murmuring in Italian to him, rubbing circles into the tight knots on his back. They stand there for a few minutes, until Nicky is able to control himself enough to let go and grab some tissues to wipe his face and snotty nose.

“We have about two minutes left of the video, guys,” Quynh says quietly from where she still sits in front of the computer, Andy who’s pulled up a chair next to her staring out with a thousand yard stare, looking at nothing. 

“We’re coming,” Joe says and leads Nicy back to where they were standing before. 

Nicky grabs one of Joe’s hands again and squeezes, gripping it tightly.

“Start it up again, Quynh,” Joe murmurs.

The video starts again and he can see Sebastien shaking on the chair, see the blood dripping from  _ somewhere _ on his face, deep and harsh against the white of the hood over his head. His stomach rebels against his attempts to keep himself under control. He has to do this for Sebastien,  _ he has to. _

_ “He’s inherited your tendency to ignore instruction,” _ the weasel faced man says, pointedly, that speaks of sinister intentions to come. 

_ “He’ll die with it too if you don’t bring me one million dollars on Sunday the sixth, that is three days from now, at eleven pm in the car park of the Little Lake Park. Absolutely no cops or the kid gets it.” _

He hates when he’s right.

There’s still more to the video and they soldier on through 

_ “I suppose I have to give you proof he’s alive, well,” _ the hood on Sebastien’s head is ripped off and he looks disoriented, the area on his face that was hit is reddening and starting to bruise,  _ “there, he’s fine, make sure to bring me my money or he’ll soon be not fine.” _

Sebastien begins to cry, then, great big sobs as he stares into the camera before the video cuts out. 

“I need to make a call,” Andy says abruptly and Nicky can see she’s shaking, her fists trembling beside her hips. She looks like she is going to start screaming and Nicky might just join her if she does. 

“I need to make a call,” she says again, then quietly: “I know someone who can help us get him back.”

She takes her phone and stalks out the front, cigarettes peeking out of her jean pockets and walks out the front. 

Neither they nor Quynh, who’s watching her walk away with deep concern, follow her outside. Nicky rubs his face, sighing deeply. 

“I don’t know who she’s calling but I genuinely believe our only chance of getting him back is to involve the cops,” Joe says tiredly, “I don’t have a million dollars just lying around and I don’t think you and Andy do either.” 

“As much as I hate to involve people who might get Sebastien hurt, I have to agree,” Quynh says as she taps a nail against the table.

“We should wait until she’s called whoever she’s going to call. We have until Sunday, either way,” Nicky says quietly. He moves to sit on the side of the kitchen table to the right of Quynh, so he can keep an eye on Nile while she sleeps on the couch. 

God. Nile. He feels the familiar dagger stab of guilt. He’s nearly forgotten all about her  _ again _ .

But when he turns to her, she’s already awake, groggy, but awake. She’s rubbing a tiny fist over her eyes, yawning and he all but runs to her and bundles her in his arms, pressing soft kisses to her hair, her forehead, her cheeks. She rubs her nose when he does so in that way of hers, that means she enjoys the attention but the close contact is a tiny bit too far. He presses a final kiss to her rubbed nose and leans back, content to hold his daughter close. 

“Papa, is Basti back? I miss him,” she murmurs, her thumb inching towards her mouth in what he suspects will be her sucking it out of stress. 

He sighs.

“No,  _ piccola _ , he’s not. It will be alright, though, we will find him and bring him home,” he kisses her forehead and hugs her tighter. Joe and Quynh move from the table to the living room, Joe to sit on the right side of Nicky and hug his husband and daughter tight and Quynh to one of the single couches, to wait for Andy to come back, her murmuring vague and ominous out the front. 

“I want to give him a big hug and tell him I love him,” Nile murmurs, pressing her cheek to his chest before nodding off again in his lap, in the arms of both her fathers. 

The door opens and Andy comes in quickly, closing and moving with a frenetic energy to the single couch next to Quynh. They’re all looking at her, waiting for her to say what it is that she was talking about. Her hands are shaking and she’s dishevelled, obvious signs that she had been pacing. She runs them through her short hair, causing it to stand on end in places. 

“You have to understand that my time being a lawyer for Prosecutions didn’t always run smoothly. No legal system is perfect and definitely not Philadelphia’s. More than once cases have come across my desk where the evidence tells one story and the accused's history tells another,” she says as she leans back in the chair slumping down into herself, her shoulders hunched. 

“I’m not proud of everything I’ve done as a Prosecutor, but there have been times that an… individual would contact me, only by phone at that point, tell me that individuals I’m prosecuting on behalf of the government are actually victims and that if I can’t the charges dropped, I should plead for lesser sentences. It would always be followed by evidence given to police anonymously.”

She rubs her hands on her pants and Nicky feels Nile jostle in her sleep, a look down sees that she’s dreaming, her eyes moving regularly. 

“So I did. Was it wrong of me? Yes, but what the system was doing was even worse. Even a little bit was more than nothing, I reasoned. One night, he turned up in person. Dressed in normal clothes, looking like a regular man. I knew the name he gave me over the phone, Lykon, was an alias but he didn’t offer me anything else. He came to blackmail me in a sense; he’d found out about Sebastien, about Merrick’s deal, and he said if I managed to bungle a case against a group of teens accused of murder who, actually were entirely innocent despite the large amount of circumstantial evidence, he’d owe me a favour.”

There’s a frenetic energy that’s built up in Andy and she pushes herself up to pace around them gesticulating and huffing some. 

“I wasn’t stupid but he knew about  _ Sebastien _ , someone I hadn’t told  _ anyone _ about, and he seemed to be ex-military with high enough connections that he could find out about  _ anything _ , seemingly. So I said yes, and botched the trial, getting the boys off. I was kindly pressured to retire as public prosecutor despite having only been there for a few years. I did,” she says as she stops and stares out the window closest to them, into the darkening evening. 

“I did and he called me, weeks later.  _ ‘I’m sorry about your job, Andy,’ _ he said.  _ ‘If you ever need anything, you call this number and I’ll do it.’ _ And that’s what I did just then. I told him about everything that’s gone down, he listened and he said  _ ‘I’ll get him home to you in two days, as well as help with your legal issues.’ _ ” 

She laughs and it sounds like a sob is ripping out of her chest as she leans her head against the window, breath fogging the glass. Nicky looks at Joe who looks back at him, stunned, and they both look at Quynh whose mouth is hanging open in surprise and shock. 

“I guess it’s a waiting game now,” Joe says quietly. 

Nicky catches the shine of tears on Andy’s cheek, glittering. 

“I guess it is,” Andy murmurs and swipes a hand through the fog on the glass. 

\--

Sebastien is rocking back and forth in place, back in the dark room. None of the bad men had put on a light even after he’d asked politely and the sounds echoing from outside of the room make him jump and tremble on the small mattress they’d given him. Wrapped up in the smelly, scratchy blanket they’d given him, he loses track of the time. There’s no windows so he can’t pass the time using the sun. It could have been days, weeks, months inside the room for all he knew. 

His parents could have forgotten about him. Could have thought he wasn’t worth all the money that Mister Merrick had wanted in exchange for him. He sniffles and cries over that. If they don’t get him, what’s going to happen to him? He doesn’t want to die. He really doesn’t. 

The two guards that sit outside his door and ignore him or bang on the door when he cries, laughing at him, get up. He can hear their voices, questioning and there’s other noises. Something hard hitting metal and voices shouting. 

He presses himself back into the corner of the room, behind the oil stained cardboard boxes. If something was hurting the bad man, it’s likely that it would want to hurt Sebastien too. He stays silent and still, with his sore head under the blanket, as the air becomes more heated and harder to breathe. He shoves a little hole so new air can come in and full body flinches when there’s a deafening bang just aways from him. 

Tears start to flow from his eyes, wetting the blanket over him. There’s too much happening and his brain is too full and-

There’s another bang, closer now, and then another, even closer still. He cringes further and further into himself with every flinch. Whatever is out there is  _ definitely _ going to get him and take him away  _ again _ …

The door jostles, metal screeching against metal. His hands slap against his ears and then his mind whispers  _ still, still, you have to be still _ .

The door screeches as it’s forced open and Sebastien is paralysed.  _ Be still, be still, be still. _

Boots hit the floor with measured steps. 

“Sebastien,” a calm, warm voice says into the silence. 

_ Move and you’re dead, _ his mind tells him. 

The footsteps get closer to him and his breathing picks up significantly.

The footsteps stop in front of him and tugs on the blanket over him. He clutches it desperately.  _ If I can’t see him they can’t see me, _ he thinks, desperately.

“Sebastien, I’m here because your mother sent me to come get you and take you back to her.”

This makes the frantic thoughts that fall like slinkies down the stairs of his mind. Andy sent this person. They must be a good person, then. 

“Mama sent you?” He replies quietly, falling into childish language, but still not coming out from under the blanket.

“She said for me to tell you that Nicky, Joe, Nile, Quynh and her miss their Basti and want him home.”

Tears well up again in his eyes and he sobs, slowly pulling the blanket down. He can only see the face of the person who made all the noise and it is warm.

“Hi, Sebastien, I’m Lykon and I’m really glad I found you.”

Sebastien nods but he cannot look him in the eyes. He looks everywhere but there and towards the door and sees red and someone lying on the ground with red all on them. 

The man grabs his face and it stings from the punch still, and turns him away, quickly, and Sebastien can feel a scream building in his chest. 

“Sebastien, hey, Sebastien. Look at me,” he does, but still not in the eyes, “that’s a good boy. We have to get out of here before more bad guys come, alright? Now I’m going to carry you in my arms and, this is  _ very _ important, I need you to hide your face in my neck. Do  _ not _ look, okay?”

Sebastien nods and Lykon gets up, towering over him. He pulls the blanket that was draped over him and shivers. He’s cold and dirty, he hopes Mister Lykon doesn’t mind because it’s not his fault. He gets up slowly, his legs hurting after being folded up for so long. He quickly grabs Sebastien and brings him to his hip. He grips him with his legs and bare feet and hides his face in Mister Lykon’s shoulder. 

“Remember,  _ don’t look, _ ” he says before making his way out. 

Sebastien does as he’s told almost every time but he’s too curious for his own good and slips his head slightly up to look over the man’s shoulder. 

There’s blood, everywhere. People are lying and not moving and it’s too much so he hides his eyes into the shoulder, breathing in the clean, washing detergent smell of the man’s clothes and closes his eyes. 

He comes to again, jolting and blinking when the man is buckling up a seatbelt over him. He blinks sluggishly and crusty eyed at him and Mister Lykon smiles at him. It’s dark and cold outside.

“What’s your favourite lollipop flavour, bud?” he asks him. 

It takes a moment for his brain to work enough to be able to give him an answer.

“Raspberry,” he says sleepily. It was his very favourite, not that he got to have it a lot but he had gotten lollipops multiple times since he had begun staying with his father and Joe.

The man nods and moves around the car to get into the driver's seat, starting the engine and turning the heat up. Sebastien feels much better already, warmth going into his feet first, no longer causing them to hurt. Mister Lykon reaches over into the other side of the car, rustles about and then leans back and towards him. He reaches out his hand, holding something in it. A lollipop.

“I think you deserve this for being a real brave boy,” he says with a smile. 

Sebastien doesn’t smile back but does reach out and grab the lollipop with a murmured  _ thank you _ and unwraps it with little fingers. 

He puts it in his mouth and the flavour explodes over his tongue, the best thing he’s had all day. 

The man drives off and there’s silence for a long time. He doesn’t know where they’re going and can’t make out any distinguishing landmarks. But it isn’t long before they’re stopping again. 

“Alright, Sebastien we’re outside your house,” the man says, turning in his seat. “I’m going to watch from here and make sure you get inside,okay?”

Sebastien looks out the window to the front door, illuminated by light. It’s still dark between the car and door, though.

“Can’t you come with me?” he begs quietly and the man shakes his head. 

“I promise it will be okay, I’ll watch from here, nothing will happen, buddy, you’ll be fine,” he says with a reassuring smile and Sebastien unlatches his seatbelt and quickly opens the door. He pauses, though.

“Thank you for rescuing me, Mister Lykon, I appreciate it a lot,” he says quietly, because if it’s dark, people are probably asleep and he doesn’t want to be rude. 

“It’s all good, buddy, now hop along, I know your parents will be worried, all four of them,” he says. 

Sebastien hops out of the warm car and into the cold, cold air of the night and steps quietly and slowly on the sidewalk before quickly moving to a jog as he crosses onto the dewy grass at a run. The illuminated door is in sight and it’s so close. His feet move quietly up the stairs to the door and he catches his breath for a moment, turning to wave into the night before moving to knock on the door. 

\--

They’d  _ just _ moved to put Nile to bed (she had to keep her routine going, as much as it hurt to contemplate) and were moving back downstairs when there’s a knock at the door, hesitant. Quynh and Andy had left more than an hour ago, to go shower and change clothes so it was just them and Nile and the gaping hole that should be Sebastien, waiting to be refilled. 

Joe quickly moves to the door to open it and almost collapses at the sight of Sebastien, dirty, shivering and barefoot, holding a lollipop on the other side. Nicky almost collapses at the sight of his son too, tears finally rushing to his eyes as he moves quickly to the boy to pick him up and look outside for the Lykon fellow but only sees a car peel away from the curb on just down from their front fence and where Sebastien was taken from. 

He clutches the boy in his arms tightly, pressing kisses to his forehead and running his hands over his dirty hair. Sebastien leans into him, burying his face in his father’s neck, hiccuping as his own tears start to fall and his bruised face hurts. 

“Daddy,” the boy whimpers quietly and Nicky squeezes him as Joe rushes up, engulfing them both in his arms. 

They move inside as one, the boy still sobbing, his tears soaking the collar of Nicky’s shirt and Joe closing and locking the door. Nobody was getting in and taking their child away again, no one. 

There’s a knock at the door and Nicky tenses around Sebastien, but remembers Andy and Quynh had left a long time ago and it’s more than time for them to come back. He feels and sees Joe move away to unlock and open the front door, whispering quietly to the women. 

He runs a soft and light finger over the bruising on his son’s face and winces at the memory of the video playing across his mind. He quickly moves to run his fingers through his son’s hair, soft and blonde. Everything he is wearing is dirty and bloodied and it doesn’t matter because they’ll buy him five closets full of clothes when this is all over. They’ll buy him anything he wants when this is all over. 

He hears and feels Andy coming up behind him and he turns to her at the same time as Sebastien’s little head pops up. 

“Ma- _ ma _ ,” he says and reaches out to her which surprises her immensely from what he can see of her face. 

He offers her the boy and she takes him, quietly, and holds him tight. He can see the tears in her eyes, cloistered at the edges, shining bright. 

“I’m so sorry, Sebastien, I’m so sorry,” she cries into his hair as he clutches her shirt.

“Papa? Baba?” Nile’s sleepy voice says from the top of the stairs. He beckons her down and takes her in his arms, kissing her head. 

“Basti’s back,” she murmurs, looking at where Sebastien’s fallen asleep in Andy’s arms, arms and face in her neck. 

Joe and Quynh join the huddle, content to be safe in the midst of their family. They can deal with the police after, with the issues with Sebastien’s adoption after, it all can be dealt with later. 

What matters is that everyone’s here and safe. Their little family is safe and warm and strong and Nicky wouldn’t have it any other way. 


End file.
